head to head · open source
Vector vs metrics
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars, 2,286 forks, 2,512 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. metrics has 17,205 stars, 2,278 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Vector leads on adoption by 31% (22,589 vs 17,205 stars). Vector is written in Rust under MPL-2.0; metrics is written in JavaScript under MIT. Vector has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, metrics 13%. Vector was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (metrics), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Vector | metrics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 17K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-05-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Vector if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick metrics if
- You want the metrics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and metrics fits your workflow better
About Vector
Vector is an open source observability data pipeline written in Rust and licensed under MPL 2.0. It operates as an end to end system for collecting, transforming, and routing logs and metrics within the cloud native monitoring ecosystem. The project is maintained by Datadog's Community Open Source Engineering team, and its topics include agent, cloud native, data transformation, datadog, etl, events, forwarder, logs, metrics, and monitoring.
read the full Vector overview →
About metrics
Metrics is an infographics generator for GitHub accounts, published under the MIT license and written in JavaScript. It lives in the GitHub ecosystem as a GitHub Action and as a hosted web service, and it produces statistics about a user, an organization, or a repository. The output is rendered as SVG, Markdown, PDF, or JSON, which means the same generated figures can be embedded in a profile readme, attached to a blog post, or consumed by another tool.
read the full metrics overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Vector or metrics more popular?
Vector has 22,589 GitHub stars and metrics has 17,205. Vector has the larger community by that measure.
Are Vector and metrics free?
Both are open source. Vector is licensed under MPL-2.0 and metrics under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Vector and metrics?
Vector is written in Rust and metrics in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Vector or metrics?
Choose Vector if you want the larger community (22,589 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose metrics if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.